In the original post in this thread I commented that Blue would be likely to polarise opinion knowing that the mere sight of anything resembling the Metro interface would put some people off even trying it! A few posts later I commented as follows:

My thinking behind this release is to offer the bling that is fashionable and likely to attract youngsters to try and experience the benefits of Linux. Witness their obsession with smart-phones and fondle slabs. If we fail to keep pace with the times and only major on code and functionality at the expense of form, we will stand little chance of attracting the next generation to Linux who will perceive the traditional desktop as something archaic only suited to geeks or grandfathers.

I use XP Pro on a daily basis but agree that MS have lost their way, managing to hide sometimes great features behind an extremely messy user hostile interface.
Other goals for Blue were Chromebook like speed together with ease of use. It attempts to combine the best of two OSs in a manner that is, like it or not, currently fashionable.

Please be assured that that your comments have not caused offence. Given that you have a new HP laptop with Win 8.1 it will probably have a USB3 port. If you install Blue to a USB3 stick you will be able to draw an objective comparison.

In Blue Pup V4 hot screen sides are enabled by default. This feature may however not always be desirable if for example, you were using a small netbook. In addition whilst it is fine for everyday use, if you were working on something with multiple windows open and could easily inadvertently bump the mouse pointer into one of the sides it is convenient to toggle it off.

If you turn it off permanently, the easiest way of switching between the desktop and the Metro interface is the two digit toggle first introduced in V2. (Press the right hand Windows or menu key with your thumb followed by the enter key with your index finger.)

This pet creates a toggle menu item at the top of the JWM desktop menu. In addition the .desktop file needs to be dragged onto the desktop. Upon clicking the icon a screen popup will appear inviting you to restart the X-server to give effect to the change. In addition both the JWM menu icon and the desktop icon will change colour to reflect the status. (Red-Enabled Blue-Disabled). This gives an immediate visual indication of the current state as the OS boots.

Installation:

1. Install the attached pet then reboot.

2. Using Rox navigate to /usr/share/applications/HotScreenSides.desktop and drag that file onto the desktop.

3. Right click the icon and edit it to remove the text beneath and optionally assign it a hotkey. (I assigned the Scroll-Lock)

V4 was intended to be the final release of Blue Pup but I reckoned without the ongoing changes to Skype for Linux. The Skype fix pet issued on 22nd Aug which allowed us to continue to run 4.2 has now been blocked so it is time to change tack.

This version contains the Skype 4.3.0.37 dotpet produced by watchdog that contains the apulse fix which basically fools Skype into believing that the pulseaudio server is running.

Major change since V4:

OOTB V5 will boot to the desktop rather than the Metro interface and “hot screen sides” will be disabled. (Indicated by a blue square icon on the desktop). This simplifies things for new users and facilitates setup. It also affords the opportunity to get used to using the various hotkeys before engaging the hot sides and/or the direct to Metro boot. Toggle switches for both items appear at the top of the JWM desktop sub-menu.

The target installation device remains as an 8GB or larger USB2 or USB3 stick. It is advisable to at least read the first two posts in this thread for details of the other features. Those posts also contain numerous links to other posts that you may wish to consult later.

Using Windows: (This is the recommended method when available)
7-Zip should be used to decompress the image. It will decompress to 3.74GB so please ensure that you have at least that much free space available.
Use win32diskimager to place the image on the stick.

N/B (Regardless of method used.)
If you first attempt to boot the stick on the same pc or laptop that you used to create it, make sure that before doing so, you shut down the device and remove all mains power from it for a couple of minutes.
This will ensure that your BIOS refreshes its view of the stick and sees it as bootable.
When you boot-up, access your BIOS to place the stick at the top of your boot order.
It may appear as a bootable ZIP or USB hard disc depending on your particular BIOS.

Setup Procedure:

Remains as detailed in the first post of this thread. (Slightly amended in the light of V5)

Final Thoughts:

The use of the inbuilt “Hot screen sides” utility is described in this post:

This feature takes a little getting used to but swiftly becomes addictive.

The custom “Orbital” wallpaper from V4 is still present if you prefer that desktop look.
The Metro tiles look best when arranged in a neat rectangle that almost fills the screen. With a small 10.6 inch screen a zoom level of 67% should do that. With a larger 23 inch monitor levels of 110% or 125% can be applied.
To zoom in and out, hold down the CTRL key then tap the plus or minus keys. Alternately hold down the CTRL key & zoom using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
If you opt to have a Metro panel that is larger than your screen the mouse scroll wheel can be used to pan left and right.
When using “Hot screen sides” the use of a mouse with a scroll wheel is essential as using a vertical scroll bar on the right hand side of the screen is difficult if an accidental side trigger is to be avoided.
EDIT:
A slideshow of V4/V5 can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sIk3a0bcaOQP8ievTTIKuuRx3hO-OJG7FO403Nhbnsk/edit#slide=id.p

I applaud the good work you have done to keep this distro current. It brings a new use of desktop management for this community to begin approaching. I understand what you've done and why you bring this for our use. THANKS!

2 questions that come to mind:

The BASH issue found last week AND has BLUE addressed it?

With what you've done, has there been any additional thought given in use of touch screen devices? (Reason: TaZoC's Lighthouse is the ONLY PUP distro which has made any headway for simple touch-screen app use and menu use when tapping an open area of the screen. The large buttons of METRO are geared for easy finger work.

I use an older HP touch laptop in seminars and presentations, my finger is my pointer.

This is a very LOW priority set of questions._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
We are all related ... Its time to show that we know this!
3 Different Puppy Search Enginesor use DogPile

Thanks for the plaudit. There are a number of threads dealing with the BASH vulnerability. I will issue a tested fix by way of a service dotpet in due course.
Unless you happen to be running a web server it appears not to be critical.

For the complete range of touch/pinch/gestures, I would suggest the full blown version of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr.
Attempting to include all the necessary components in a light weight Pup would be fraught with difficulty and add enormous bloat. Better to use a known working solution.

You have really blown away my kids and co-workers who prefer the new fangled gear with this little number, and I thank you for the idea of having
something that appeals to the mainstream MS scared of Linux fogeys and the young crowd. In my world, this is amazing! The kids want to use it, some of the co-workers want a copy! I want to thank you for that, I have been trying to accomplish this for years... All because of a Metro screen who'da thunk?

I have been asked to get Netflix working. So far no joy. The latest Chrome/
Chrominium 37 maybe/38 yes with latest nss 3.16 is rumored to work
without wine et al. Can I update without breaking anything? (not in PPM)

I also had trouble installing to a fresh OOTB Transcend 8g using the new
Lucid 5.28. I also got the no more room on device error (or not error) so
I fired up a broken XP, installed the tools and finally created the disk. I did
have to reboot twice before Blue 5 loaded. Runs well but volume icon left
and will not return. Used ALSA wizard to set volume. Side screen unbearable
to keep running - constantly pops up with touchpad use on this Dell 610

I am going to retry an install under Slacko (which should run the above browsers/libs ergo wineless Netflix) if I can't upgrade them here.
pfft.. I just use my tablet if I need to 'flix, it's simpler, but if Metro &NF
converts the unconvertable, I'm game!

I'll keep you posted on how the install went, and if the few issues did too..
if no joy, I can do the XP deal... but my feelings are in the first line.

Thanks for your feedback. V5 was released in a hurry to deal with the Skype issue and I was forced to put some other changes on hold. Specifically I had been attempting to get both “O/K Google” and VideoStream for Chrome Cast working and had tried the latest beta and dev versions of both Chromium and Chrome for Linux.

Before applying this patch it is recommended that you use Snapshot Manager to create a snapshot. It can be found at the bottom of the JWM Filesystem sub-menu. (This utility was a stroke of genius by BARRYK and is equivalent to the Windows restore point tool)

Having installed the pet the currently patched vulnerabilities show as fixed:

It took a long time.....
I started to read this thread backward, to see what I could encounter, but after 30 minutes, still no prompt.
Went to bed ...
This morning ... a prompt. And no error messages. The decompression had finished.
sync(-ed) (but after soo many hours this should not have been needed).

And rebooted.
Just a flashing cursor on a black screen for more than 10 minutes (laptop = HP DV2000, Intel T2400). Decided this was not working.
Different laptop: Dell E6430 (intel i5). Same behaviour.

Somewhere in the proces something must have gone wrong.
During decompression, the USB stick was mounted (how else could I know it was sdb1) but not actively used (i.e. PCmanFM).

The process should take no longer than 10-20 minutes. Given that the stick is now in an unknown state it would be best to return it to its virgin state before trying again.
In Linux use Gparted to do that:

1. Start by clicking on “device” then select “Create Partition Table”

2. Create a single fat32 partition spanning the whole stick accepting all other defaults.
(Do not set any flags or change anything else)

You should also confirm the checksum of the image and target just sdb rather than sdb1. Unmount the stick before targeting it and if you are not modifying the command to include the path to the img, ensure that you launch the command from a terminal window within the directory that contains the img.
You can see why I prefer the Windows method when available. _________________Regards ETP

Used a W7 PC to format the stick, and 7zip to unzip. With windows image writer it worked (took zome 20 mins). I have a working USB stick now. Blue boots into JWM (not metro as in post #1) and I can toggle to metro using the menu.

On a netbook (1024x600) I scaled to 67% and have a nice metro desktop.
It boots quite quick, when I have (my own) internet tonight I will give it A GO.

Thanks for the quick reply

Volhout

ps: is there a hotkey to toggle between metro and jwm ? I noticed that there is no "browser" shortcut in the taskbar to ease life. And when I quit Chromium and restart it through the menu, to does default to the metro screen, but NOT full screen. Always in a tab. Any thoughts ?
pps: I understand the "hot sides" function now, but why bring up menu with the "quit" function every time I go to JWM ? On my netbook it is extremely large and covers most desktop icons. Every time I have to manually close it. Wasn't it better to add the 10 functions in this popup to the JWM desktop as icons ?

ps: is there a hotkey to toggle between metro and jwm ? I noticed that there is no "browser" shortcut in the taskbar to ease life. And when I quit Chromium and restart it through the menu, to does default to the metro screen, but NOT full screen. Always in a tab. Any thoughts ?

The left hand windows key is used to launch it full screen. Please see README.txt tile on Metro interface.

Quote:

pps: I understand the "hot sides" function now, but why bring up menu with the "quit" function every time I go to JWM ? On my netbook it is extremely large and covers most desktop icons. Every time I have to manually close it. Wasn't it better to add the 10 functions in this popup to the JWM desktop as icons ?

One of the aims of Blue Pup is to provide as many alternate easy means of navigation as possible. Please see the two digit toggle described in the hot screen sides dotpet post which it provides. The panel items can be launched with the mouse or by using the arrow keys followed by the enter key.

On a small netbook in order to fit the 10 icons around the panel visit the JWM Desktop sub-menu and reduce the global font size to 84 then restart X._________________Regards ETP

4. New toggle switch on JWM Desktop menu to turn Conky display on and off.

5. Expanded README notes with original launcher on Metro tile and additional bookmark in browser.

6. For V6 there now remains only one optional dotpet - BlueScreenSaver.pet. All other service packs and previously optional pets having been incorporated.

7. On the new desktop the “Moon” appears. It seemed to fit in with the new wallpaper but is also an additional icon to launch the Metro interface. In a similar fashion to the WWW panel icon it will not launch it full screen.
To launch Metro full screen, press the left hand Windows key or kiss the left hand side of your screen with your mouse pointer if you have “Hot Screen Sides” enabled.

8. A change from Chromium to Chrome Stable 38.0.2125.101 proved problematic. I will await the next stable version but have upgraded libnss3 to 3.17.1 in anticipation.

Notes:
There are now 3 toggle switches on the JWM desktop menu. OOTB their default states are as follows:
Boot with Conky display – ENABLED
Boot with “Hot Screen Sides” – DISABLED (Can also use the desktop icon which reflects the status to toggle this feature)
Boot direct to Metro interface - DISABLED

The target installation device remains as an 8GB or larger USB2 or USB3 stick. It is advisable to at least read the first two posts in this thread for details of the other features. Those posts also contain numerous links to other posts that you may wish to consult later.

Using Windows: (This is the recommended method when available)
7-Zip should be used to decompress the image. It will decompress to 3.74GB so please ensure that you have at least that much free space available on an NTFS volume.
Use win32diskimager to place the image on the stick.

(Only issue the sync command when the 1st command has finished. If the stick was seen as sdb1 you should just target sdb NOT sdb1.
Make sure the stick is not mounted before you issue the above commands)

N/B (Regardless of method used.)
If you first attempt to boot the stick on the same pc or laptop that you used to create it, make sure that before doing so, you shut down the device and remove all mains power from it for a couple of minutes.
This will ensure that your BIOS refreshes its view of the stick and sees it as bootable.
When you boot-up, access your BIOS to place the stick at the top of your boot order.
It may appear as a bootable ZIP or USB hard disc depending on your particular BIOS.

Setup Procedure:

Remains as detailed in the first post of this thread. (Slightly amended in the light of V5/V6)
(If you move a working Blue Pup USB stick to another PC repeat that procedure on the new PC. Blue is totally transportable between PCs)

Final Thoughts:

JWM has been modified and substituting a different windows manager will break most of the hotkey & run or raise features.

The Metro tiles look best when arranged in a neat rectangle that almost fills the screen. With a small 10.6 inch screen a zoom level of 67% should do that. With a larger 23 inch monitor levels of 110% or 125% can be applied.
To zoom in and out, hold down the CTRL key then tap the plus or minus keys. Alternately hold down the CTRL key & zoom using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
If you opt to have a Metro panel that is larger than your screen the mouse scroll wheel can be used to pan left and right.
When using “Hot screen sides” the use of a mouse with a scroll wheel is essential as using a vertical scroll bar on the right hand side of the screen is difficult if an accidental side trigger is to be avoided.

If Blue is run on a small netbook it is probably advisable to disable both the Conky display and the “Hot Screen Sides” feature. The 2 digit toggle (RH Windows or menu key followed by the enter key) is then the swiftest means of navigation.
On a small netbook in order to fit the 11 icons around the panel visit the JWM Desktop sub-menu and reduce the global font size to 84 or 96 then restart X.

v6default_desktop_small.jpg

Description

V6 desktop with Conky panel & hot screen sides enabled.

Filesize

63.58 KB

Viewed

3312 Time(s)

v6default_metro_small.JPG

Description

V6 Metro interface with new wallpaper.

Filesize

68.84 KB

Viewed

3223 Time(s)

_________________Regards ETP

KennelsLast edited by ETP on Wed 24 Dec 2014, 14:49; edited 6 times in total

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